


greatness thrust upon him

by akaiiko



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Alpha/Beta/Omega Dynamics, Angst with a Happy Ending, Gender Neutral Language Used for Keith (Voltron), In an AU Where S8 (Voltron) Wasn't a Dumpster Fire, Intersex Omegas, Light Angst, M/M, Possessive Behavior, Post-Canon, Questionable Humor, RomCom Level Shenanigans, Shiro (Voltron) Has a Large Cock, That's It That's Literally the Entire Story
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-01
Updated: 2020-08-01
Packaged: 2021-03-05 19:14:59
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 14,274
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25640416
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/akaiiko/pseuds/akaiiko
Summary: Keith is a verified size queen, and Shiro proves his big dick energy isn’t just a metaphor.Keith doesn’t want to hear the tragicomedy of some alpha getting dragged for his respectable enough dick size.Tiredly, he starts in on his leg stretches. It’s wonderfully mindless to focus on the burn in his thighs as he leans into his splits. When his forehead touches the mat, he wonders if he could sleep here. Nice as the nap would be, he knows it’s not worth it. Everyone would scold him. ‘See!’ they’d say, eyes big and lovingly judgmental. ‘You need to rest! This will be your first heat in years and you don’t even have a heat partner! Look at this informative omegan health pamphlet!’But Keith doesn’t need informative omegan health pamphlets, he needs a nap. And a dick.
Relationships: Keith/Shiro (Voltron)
Comments: 51
Kudos: 805





	greatness thrust upon him

Everyone knows the legend of how Cadet Keith Sekaquaptewa once broke out of his heat room to complain his knotting toy wasn’t big enough.

It’s fine. Keith’s not a cadet anymore, and he’s been on Altean-grade (and then Galran-grade) suppressants for going on five years. Theoretically everyone should’ve forgotten that embarrassing prologue to his nonexistent sex life. But they haven’t. Like, they haven’t at _all_.

Which is why fifteen seconds into his morning stretches, an alpha comes over and asks: “Want some help?” The alpha is human, a lieutenant, and wearing leggings that cling to the outline of his dick enough to prove he’s a shower instead of a grower.

“Thanks, but no.”

The alpha—to his credit—gets the message and backs off. Keith listens with half an ear as the alpha rejoins his friends. Per usual, there’s a series of very commiserating backslaps. Then: “Told you that your dick wasn’t big enough. You’re only what, eight inches?”

“Eight and a half!”

“Dude, he rejected a ten inch toy. No way was he going to—”

Thank fuck, the whole group moves out of the gym and out of Keith’s hearing. He doesn’t want to hear the tragicomedy of some alpha getting dragged for his respectable enough dick size.

Anyway, they were wrong. The toy’d been eleven inches. Without the knot.

Tiredly, Keith starts in on his leg stretches. It’s wonderfully mindless to focus on the burn in his thighs as he leans into his splits. When his forehead touches the mat, he wonders if he could sleep here. Nice as the nap would be, he knows it’s not worth it. Everyone would scold him. ‘See!’ they’d say, eyes big and lovingly judgmental. ‘You need to rest! This will be your first heat in years and you don’t even have a heat partner! Look at this informative omegan health pamphlet!’

Keith doesn’t need informative omegan health pamphlets, he needs a nap. And a dick.

* * *

The next alpha approaches him during lunch. Keith’s spent ten or so minutes pushing his food around his plate when the guy finally gets the guts to approach. Human again, recently graduated cargo pilot based on his uniform, and stinking faintly of both want and fear sweat. Going into standard at ease, he says: “Paladin Sekaquaptewa.”

“Nope.”

Another—half Galra, heavily scaled, known around the base for being a good lay but a terrible boyfriend—comes by when Keith’s running drills with the Blades. (“Would you like to spar with me?” | “No, sorry, maybe you could take on Acxa instead.”)

And another—human, navigation tech, ugh—while Keith’s selecting shampoo from the commissary. (“You’ve got beautiful hair. I could help you wash it.” | “ _No_.”)

That night, after an _unassisted_ shower, he pulls up his comms.

Deep space frequencies means it takes a few seconds for the call to settle and Shiro’s face to snap into blue-lit clarity. “What’s wrong?” Shiro asks. Immediately, and without any further prompting. The urgency and worry is probably because Keith just used the emergency override code for the Atlas-wide comms. Which he’s only supposed to use for actual emergencies. Like people dying, or planet-wide invasions.

“I had to go off suppressants.” As soon as he says it, he feels a little dumb. Going off suppressants is a normal part of heat cycling. The fucking pamphlets had assured him of that much. It’s not like he hasn’t been handling it.

“That’s rough,” Shiro says. All gentle and shit.

It’s enough to make Keith’s lower lip tremble and his eyes sting. He bites his lip, because the last thing he needs is for Shiro to think he’s about to cry. Because he isn’t. Even if Shiro’s easy kindness makes him feel raw with need.

“How soon are you going into heat?”

“Soon?”

Shiro laughs—a rough sound that strokes down Keith’s spine like velvet—and says, “You don’t sound too sure.”

The moment feels easy. Safe. Keith curls deeper into his bed. “I’m not. The doc said it could take two weeks to a month for the suppressants to leave my system.”

Humming acknowledgement, Shiro rests his chin on the palm of his newly built Altean-Olkari prosthesis. It’s less bulky than the floating prosthesis, and it actually connects to his shoulder, and it’d been a relief for everyone when the whole procedure didn’t involve a near death experience. The new prosthesis makes hugs better, too. More like they used to be. Firm. Encircling. Safe.

Keith has the sudden and desperate urge to feel those arms curled around his waist now. Holding him close to block out everything that’s been going wrong with his life since the doc announced he was ‘years overdue’ for a heat cycle.

Maybe Shiro knows, because his voice is soft when he asks: “Do you have everything you need?”

It’s not fair that Shiro’s like this. Sweet, and gentle, and protective. The perfect alpha.

“Yeah,” Keith says, hunching his shoulders up toward his ears with the lie of it. Even when he was younger and warier, ready to bolt at the first sign of trouble, he’d never been good at lying to Shiro. The years since have only made it harder. But. “I’m fine.” When Shiro raises an eyebrow at him, he amends, “I’ll _be_ fine.”

“Huh.”

“I _will_.”

“Yeah, you will,” Shiro says. He’s got a fond tilt to his mouth, like he thinks Keith is adorably stubborn, and it’s more charming than it has any right to be. “I’ll be back in four days, okay?”

Keith stamps down the surge of hope and want. “But you’re not due back for a week…?”

“I can get the mission done in four days.”

The cocky assurance in Shiro’s voice _does_ things to Keith. He really hopes the blush he feels isn’t visible over the comms. Half burying his face in his pillow, he mutters, “Just don’t start an intergalactic incident.”

Another rough laugh from Shiro dislodges the tension in his spine. It’s an ache he’s carried between his shoulder blades since the suppressant taper started. Now, only ten or so minutes into a call with Shiro, he’s relaxed. Almost drowsy with relief. Stupid hormones. “Don’t worry, Keith,” Shiro says. “I’ll handle it. You focus on taking care of yourself.”

“Yeah, I will.”

“I mean it.”

“So do I.”

“Keith…” The tilt to his mouth is exasperated and still so achingly fond. That’d be devastating enough without what he says next, which is: “You haven’t built your nest yet. Why don’t you get some things from my room?”

Blushing hot, Keith shoves his entire face into his pillow. Shiro—as the only alpha in his life he trusted—had always given him the heavily scented blankets and clothing needed for his nest. It’d never been enough. Keith had wailed for his alpha, and bounced helplessly on toys that never gave him what he wanted, and cried. A lot. Not that Shiro’d ever found out any of that. Thank fuck.

But _he’s_ thinking about all of it—and about what it’d mean to go to Shiro’s room and gather up things scented like his best friend (his chosen alpha)—and he feels the old same want that’s acute enough to pass for need.

“I don’t. I don’t know—” Keith tries. “It’s—”

“You don’t have to, but we both know you’ll feel better if you do. I can tell you haven’t slept.” Guilt barely has time to sink its claws in before Shiro soothes it away with: “It’ll make me happy if I know you’re nesting properly.”

And, well, _fuck_.

* * *

Keith tells himself he’ll be sensible. Restrained. Dignified. Take a tee shirt or two. Maybe a pillow. Instead, he ends up stealing all of Shiro’s bedding and most of his clothing. It takes three hours to assemble his nest—he misses a meeting in the process—and the result is...

Well, the result is that he spends the rest of the day lolling happily in a nest that’s _drenched_ in his alpha’s scent.

By the time he heads out to dinner—wearing one of Shiro’s old, perfectly worn in hoodies—he feels relaxed and comfortable and grounded. Shiro’ll be so happy when they talk tonight. The buoying contentment doesn’t last long. Maybe five steps into the caf.

Alphas converge on him like he’s a french fry and they’re a flock of seagulls. Keith tries to be polite—he’s the Black Paladin—but it’s hard when the third alpha in as many _seconds_ puts a hand on him. Eventually Hunk and Romelle rescue him, hustling him to a side table and bracketing him in with their bodies. The rest of the Paladins glare at anyone stupid enough to approach. His protective pack lets him eat in peace.

But the scene in the caf is only a taste of what’s to come.

Over the next three days, Keith finds himself cornered at least a dozen times. Some back off with a simple ‘no.’ Others require more persuasion.

“Come on. You need a heat partner.” It’s a pilot this time—an MFE fighter from another Garrison base—who leans in too close. They’re all starting to blend together. Young asshole alphas who think ‘no’ means ‘yes’ and ‘yes’ means ‘bend me over in the middle of this hangar and have at me.’ Romelle calls them alphaholes. This guy? Definitely an alphahole. “You can’t go through it alone.”

“Yeah, I can,” Keith says, leaning away. All he has to do is grit his teeth through this. Drills will be over soon. But the scent of lust and cologne coming off the guy is like an icepick between his eyes. Each time he catches it on an inhale his nerves prick with concentrated, visceral, aching _fuck off_.

(—it doesn’t help that he can feel the eyes of everyone in the hangar on him. None of his pack are here, so no one will step in to make this awful conversation stop. Keith is supposed to handle himself. Or he’s supposed to let the alpha bend him over because _that’s what bitches are for_ —)

The pilot leans closer. “We all heard what happened last time. You don’t just need a bigger dick, you need someone who can give that dick to you til you scream.”

And, well, he’s not _wrong_. Keith knows at least part of his problem back then was how silicone was never going to replace the flesh & blood alpha his body craved. But this idiot isn’t his alpha. “I’m not interested,” he says.

“I’m eleven inches,” the pilot replies.

Keith doesn’t know what happens to his civility. The suppressant taper started almost two weeks ago, and alphas started noticing the difference a few days after that. Despite everything he’d kept it together. Maintained the expected calm of a leader and a war hero. Curt sometimes, yes, but fucking _civilized_. “And my alpha’s thirteen,” he says.

Dead silence falls. Keith enjoys it almost as much as he enjoys the way the pilot’s jaw drops. It’s vindicating. Being polite is overrated.

After a few precious sputtering tics, the pilot snaps, “You don’t have an alpha.”

Once again, he’s not _wrong_ , but.

Keith gestures to the Garrison uniform jacket he’s wearing. The one that still smells like Shiro. Like _alpha_. “Yeah, I do. You’ve heard of him. Captain of the Atlas. Champion of the Galra Arenas. Commander of the Coalition.” Each title leeches a little more color from the pilot’s face. Lifting his chin, Keith goes for the metaphorical jugular: “Takashi Shirogane.”

The pilot swallows audibly, then mumbles something indecipherable as he steps back. It’s more than vindicating to watch him flee. It’s euphoric. At least until Keith notices the audience.

* * *

“Don’t be mad.”

Shiro blinks. In the blue tinted light of the comms, his hair looks like starlight and his bemused smile is something out of a fairytale. “What?”

No one told him yet. Somehow. By some miracle. No one’s told Shiro what Keith announced in a Garrison flight hangar. For a tic, he allows himself to fantasize that maybe he won’t have to tell Shiro. It’s a good fantasy. Nearly as good as the one he has about Shiro sweeping him up into his arms and carrying him off into a sunset while declaring undying love.

“Keith? What happened?”

Right. Keith can do this. As the Black Paladin, as a grown ass adult, as a— Oh fuck. Keith absolutely cannot do this. The only option is to go become a nun on Daibazaal.

“ _Keith._ ”

“I might’ve told an entire flight hangar that you’re my alpha and have a thirteen inch dick.”

Any other time, the howling laughter this pulls from Shiro would be gratifying. It’s the kind of laugh that steals all composure and oxygen. The kind Shiro doesn’t allow himself often. When he does, Keith feels a possessive pride that can carry him through a week of bullshit.

Now is not any other time.

Quietly, he buries himself in his nest, heart clenching on nothing and spine pulled tight as a marionette string. Of course Shiro thinks it’s funny. Anyone would think it’s funny. The idea that an alpha like Shiro would want an omega like Keith. At least Shiro’s not mad, he figures. That’s. That’s _something_.

Eventually Shiro quiets. “Keith? Oh. Oh, Keith. I’m sorry for laughing.”

“‘s fine.”

“No, it’s not. It’s not fine. Look at me.” Shiro infuses his words with the low coax of alpha command, and even if Keith weren’t already gone on him it’d be impossible to resist that particular tone of voice. “I’m sorry.”

Keith swallows and pulls one of Shiro’s pillows closer. “’kay.”

Shiro eyes him for a few ticks longer. Soft. Assessing. “So why did you tell a flight hangar that we’re mated?”

“Pushy alpha,” Keith says. Amends, “Alphas. They’ve been like this for weeks. I— I just thought— No one would mess with me if they thought I was yours.”

Leaning forward with a hum, Shiro says, “You did good.” The warmth of his praise washes over Keith. It feels good, sweet and reassuring as one of their hugs. Fuck, his heat must be close if simple praise is effecting him this much. “And I’ll be there tomorrow morning to handle any stragglers. Don’t worry, Keith.”

But Keith does worry. If this suppressant purge has taught him anything, it’s that alphas will chase after any omega in (almost) heat. Even him. Once Shiro arrives, it’ll be obvious they’re not mates and next time this happens Shiro may be mated for real. Keith’ll be fucked.

Some of it must show on his face. Fuck. He’s never been good at hiding things from his (not really) alpha.

Shiro sighs and scruffs a hand through his hair. It sticks up in awkward tufts before settling. Endearingly awkward. Keith wants to pet it all down for him. But that’s not allowed, because they’re not mated, and it’s all a mess. “Trust me. I’ll take care of it.” Before Keith can protest, he adds, “Go to sleep, baby. I’ll see you soon.”

* * *

Romelle answers his comm ping with a whine. “Keeeeith, whyyyyyy.”

“Shiro called me baby.”

Big blue eyes suddenly take up most of the holo screen as she mashes her comm close to her face. “This is good. Lance tells me that baby is a common Earth endearment. Shiro is endeared.”

“I guess?” Keith drops his comm so he can scrub at his face with both hands. His cheeks are hot to the touch—either from the blush or from his oncoming heat. “Oh my god, Romelle. I told an entire flight hangar that he was my alpha.”

“You did,” she confirms. “You did do that.”

“And then I told _him_ that I told an entire flight hangar that he was my alpha.”

“Yes, that was very brave of you.”

“And then he called me baby.” Not just called him baby, but called him baby in the gravelly tone he used when he wanted Keith to pay attention. To submit. To— “Does he think he’s obligated to mate with me now?” Keith blurts. “As a friend thing? Because I told everyone we were?”

When he peeks through his fingers, he sees Romelle’s puffed cheeks and furrowed eyebrows. She’s thinking. It looks ridiculous. Fuck. They’re both ridiculous.

“Is that how Earth courtships work?” she finally asks.

Keith grimaces. Back when he’d been on Earth and noticeably omega, no one had wanted to court him and he’d been too hung up on an alpha he couldn’t have to care even if they did. Once they got into space, courtships didn’t rank for any of them except maybe Lance. Courting is a nebulous unknown for him. “I don’t think so. But you know Shiro.”

Romelle nods agreeably and puffs her cheeks again. The space wolf jolts from its nap on the floor at her noisy exhale. “I suppose you’ll have to ask him,” she says. “When he returns.”

“Yeah...”

* * *

Keith’s plan to save Shiro from their fake mating is simple and achievable. It also self-destructs in seconds.

This time the alpha is Altean. Colony born, with enough alchemical prowess to have made him an asset to the Coalition’s nascent wormhole program. Keith is pretty sure they’re just having a conversation about quintessence anomalies until the Altean places a hand on his shoulder. “Did you know the Alteans have perfected quintessence syncing techniques to assist omegas through their heats?”

It’s definitely the most unique come on he’s gotten, and it doesn’t have anything to do with dick size so that’s something. “Um. No. I didn’t know that.”

The Altean nods sagely. “I thought not. You see, many omegas—particularly those sensitive to quintessence like yourself—find that they require something _more_ during mating.” That’s not a dick reference. It’s not. Keith can’t handle that being a dick reference. “This is why Altean alphas—like myself—have learned to enlarge our knots and stamina via quintessence manipulation.”

Fuck. It _was_ a dick reference.

Keith feels a little of his soul die. All he wanted, when he came here, was to be the first to see Shiro. It was the plan. Clinging to his plan with white knuckles, he says, “That’s nice for Altean omegas. When is the Atlas due to land?”

(—there’s no one in the control room. Before the suppressant taper started, that wouldn’t have meant shit because Keith is a Blade and a Paladin. Now his skin itches because there’s _danger_ in being alone with a strange alpha. The Altean is strong enough to force—)

The Altean raises an eyebrow and subtly tightens his grip on Keith’s shoulder. “I assure you, not all Altean alphas discriminate. I would be happy to show you—”

“Show him _what_.”

Keith knows that whip crack tone—the easy command wielded with brutal precision—and hearing it now feels like dipping into a warm bath and having ice water dumped over his head simultaneously. He’s not surprised, when he turns, to see Shiro in the doorway.

“Ah,” the Altean says. The hand on Keith’s shoulder tightens again, and if he weren’t part Galra it’d be leaving bruises. “Captain Shirogane. You have...returned.”

“I have,” Shiro says. There’s not an _ounce_ of give in his voice. “Keith needed me.” A pause, then: “ _Needs_ me.”

Keith can count on a single hand the number of times he’s seen Shiro like this. One of those times, Shiro’d been possessed by Haggar and trying to kill him. It shouldn’t be hot now to see the clench to his jaw or the way his eyes have gone murderous dark. Shouldn’t be, but is.

“Ah,” the Altean says again. “Then perhaps we should continue our discussion later, Keith.”

Slowly, Keith drags his gaze back to the Altean. He’s been trying to be polite to his ‘suitors’—he knows what it means to be a leader—but he’s never going to continue this ‘discussion.’ Is there a polite way to say that? Years of diplomacy lessons from Allura and she’d never gotten around to how he should say ‘I never want to see your quintessence engorged dick, ever.’ Keith opens his mouth. Closes it.

“You didn’t say what you wanted to show him,” Shiro says.

“It’s a personal matter.”

“I was unaware you’d been with the Coalition long enough to have personal matters with Keith,” Shiro says. The prosthetic creaks faintly as he curls it into a fist. Some of the veins spark lurid blue. “Or that you’d stay long enough to act on them.”

Someone coughs. It sounds very far away. Keith has a sinking awareness that once again he’s managed to gather an audience. Or, well, _they’ve_ managed to gather an audience. Fuck. This isn’t good for Shiro’s reputation, or for Keith’s plan to help Shiro escape being labeled as his alpha.

Keith pulls away from the Altean—make that he _tries_ to pull away from the Altean. As he takes a step forward, his shoulder is pulled back by the man’s unwillingness to read the room and _let go_. He looks back. “I need—” he starts.

Shiro beats him to the metaphorical punch. “Let my omega go. Now.”

The Altean lets go. Keith takes a step away. Then another. Then he’s running. Not on purpose, he’s not some fucking omega from a bodice ripper like the ones Lance hides in his sock drawer, but he’s _running_ because he wants to be with Shiro almost as much as he wants to be away from the Altean. And he doesn’t stop running until he slams into Shiro’s chest.

An arm hooks around his waist as Shiro hoists him up easily. Despite two years on the space whale, the alpha will always be built taller and broader and in moments like this it _shows_. There’s no sign of strain as he holds up all Keith’s body weight with one arm.

Wrapping his own arms around those muscular shoulders, Keith buries his face into the crook of Shiro’s neck where the scent of him is strongest.

One of the things he’s never been able to articulate—not to anyone—is how fully Shiro’s scent encompasses _home_. It’s all the sharpness of a spaceship’s beaten metal hull and the clarity of desert air after rainfall and the warmth of flannel worn by a scrub pine campfire. After all these years, he’s not sure if Shiro’s scent is made up of things he associates with safety & love, or if he associates those things with safety & love because they remind him of Shiro.

Breathing it in now reminds him that no matter what, everything will be okay.

The past two weeks melt away. Keith burrows closer, nosing against the steady thump of Shiro’s pulse where his scent is strongest. “‘s good to have you back,” he says. Just loud enough to know he’ll be heard.

Shiro’s arm tightens around his waist. “It’s good to be back.”

Another cough. It might be the same person from before. Or someone else. Fuck if Keith knows. But it’s enough to jolt him, and he tries to let go of Shiro so they can get a more respectable distance between their bodies. Only Shiro doesn’t let go. Just holds tighter.

“Lieutenant Commander Alvarez,” Shiro says. “Please complete docking and debrief procedures.” This gets an affirmative from Veronica, and if she tells Lance about this whole mess then Keith’ll have to leave Earth. That nunnery on Daibazaal is becoming more attractive by the minute. “Alchemist Valan, I would suggest you look into a transfer. Soon.”

It takes longer than it should for Keith to connect the handsy Altean to the name ‘Alchemist Valan.’ It takes even longer to realize that Shiro just pulled rank and threatened a presumably valuable ally. And after all of that, it sinks in that Shiro’s carrying him from the room.

“That wasn’t necessary,” he says, before adding as an afterthought, “I can walk.”

Shiro hums an acknowledgment. “Arms around my neck, baby,” he says. When Keith obeys—more out of shock than conscious choice—he hooks his other arm under Keith’s butt and hoists him higher. Automatically, Keith’s legs wrap around his waist.

A blush crawls up his neck and he knows—he _knows_ —his cheeks have gone red. The same red as his first lion. “You can’t carry me across the base,” he says.

It’s a stillborn protest. Shiro can. More to the point: Shiro _will_.

“Do you want me to put you down?”

No. Keith bites his tongue and changes tracks. “You shouldn’t threaten Alchemist Valan.”

The growl Shiro lets out is like an avalanche. Keith _feels_ it before he hears it. The whine he lets out in turn is more submissive than he’s ever dared.

“I should break his jaw,” Shiro says. Despite the rage still giving gravel to his voice, his hands on Keith are infinitely gentle. He’s maybe the only person who can make being treated like handspun glass feel good. Tucked against his chest, everything eases, and Keith doesn’t even feel that guilty for enjoying the warm strength of him. “And his hands. No one gets to talk to you or touch you against your will like that. No one.”

Some vestige of self-preservation keeps Keith from saying that the Altean didn’t say anything all that worse than what dozens of alphas have spewed at him since the suppressants started wearing off. Instead, he says, “I appreciate it.” Because he does. More than he should.

The sincerity drains at least some of the alpha fury. Enough that Shiro sounds only mildly irritated (but mostly curious) as he asks: “What did he want to show you?”

Keith figures it’s not too dangerous of a question. “Alteans can make their knots bigger with quintessence.”

“And he thought that was appropriate because...?”

Oh. Oh fuck. Keith clears his throat and is suddenly— _deeply_ —grateful that his face is mostly hidden against Shiro’s neck. Maybe he should’ve thought that through more. “Um. Do you...do you remember in the Garrison? When I broke out of the heat rooms?”

“Yes.”

“People, um, they didn’t forget about that.”

They go on in silence for three hallways. No one they pass greets the newly returned Captain of the Atlas, which is enough for Keith to get the inkling that Shiro must look like some human incarnation of a Galran war god.

According to Krolia, the Galra mostly moved on from any concept of religion around the time they began spacefaring. Keith still wonders if he ought to pray to some ancestral force. The growl rumbling in Shiro’s chest is strong enough to rattle the distant stars. But then again, the Galra prize alpha mates who can protect the pack. Which Shiro can. Obviously. Who knows, maybe Keith’s ancestors would be proud of him.

Then they turn a corner, and Keith finds himself not-quite-slammed against the wall of a small alcove. Gasping, he tips his head back to look up at Shiro. In the dim light his scar is a stark brand across his face. A reminder that he spent a year battling the universe and _winning_.

“How many?”

Keith swallows, fingers digging into the tense muscles of Shiro’s back. “How many what?”

“How many alphas came onto you like that fucking Altean did?”

“I— I don’t know.”

“That many, huh?” Shiro laughs, but there’s no joy to the sound. “Were they all that crass?”

“No, it was fine. I handled it, Shiro. It—”

Leaning down, Shiro presses their foreheads together and murmurs, “Don’t.” The ragged edge of it cuts Keith to the quick. “Don’t, baby. I shouldn’t have left you alone. If I’d known…”

Outside their little alcove, the world goes on.

Keith’s heart feels like a rabbit caught in a snare. All animal adrenaline. Swallowing again, he tentatively reaches up to pet over the close shaven buzz of Shiro’s undercut. “It’s okay,” he says, even though he’s not sure what he’s absolving Shiro of. Not that it would matter. Keith will absolve Shiro of anything. Everything. “It’s okay.”

Slowly his hand works from Shiro’s hair to his jaw, still clenched tight. Dark eyes lock on his—soft and challenging—before Shiro turns his head just enough to press a kiss into the palm of Keith’s hand. Breath caught in his throat, Keith feels a hot tightening at his core.

“Remember what I said during our call?” _Trust me. I’ll take care of it._ Even though Keith doesn’t say anything, his expression must be answer enough, because Shiro nips very gently at the base of his thumb. “So, are you going to let me take care of you?” Shiro asks. His breath is a warm rush against Keith’s skin.

The tightening intensifies and Keith feels himself clench around nothing. Heat nips at the base of his spine. Blood thrums in his ears and his teeth feel sharp in his mouth. “You don’t have to,” he whispers. “I don’t... I don’t need…”

“Let me take care of you.” Gently, slowly, like he wants Keith to feel every inch of it, Shiro presses their bodies closer together. Deeper into the alcove. Until he could pass for Keith’s whole world. Their noses nudge against one another. They’re almost kissing. “Let me be your alpha. Let me give you what you need, baby.”

Keith doesn’t need enhanced knots, or dickish alphas, or silicone toys. But he’s spent so long thinking about what he doesn’t need. What he won’t miss. What he can survive without.

“You don’t have to,” he says. One last attempt at saving Shiro from this. Because he’s not strong enough to say he doesn’t want what Shiro’s offering. All he can do is offer an out. “Not if you don’t want—”

In a dark alcove off a main Garrison hallway, Shiro leans down and kisses him.

And he never thought of kissing like this—as the curl of Shiro’s fingers in his hair and the soft rasp of Shiro’s chapped lips on his own—but it’s everything. It’s _everything_.

Keith falls apart. Whimper caught in his throat, he lets Shiro coax him through kiss after kiss. Something’s shaken loose in his soul—falling further away with each slide of their bodies against one another—but he doesn’t care. Won’t ever care so long as Shiro keeps putting him back together.

“Let me,” Shiro whispers. It’s maybe a command but it comes out like a prayer. Benediction against Keith’s kiss swollen lips. “Let me have you.”

Out of all the things Keith has ever said, this is the most honest: “I’ve always been yours.”

* * *

Making out in hidden corners only lasts so long—both of them riding too close to the edge of Keith’s heat to be comfortable with the exposure.

“I can walk,” Keith says. But it’s weak, and he knows it, and he’s already pressing his face into Shiro’s neck as he’s carried home. If Shiro put him down, he’s not sure his legs would carry him all the way back to his nest. As in, could he make them? Yes. Does he want to? Not really. Winding his arms tighter around his alpha’s shoulders, he snuggles in closer and hopes he isn’t called on his bluff.

They make it back to his room in record time. No one stops them, though a few people are brave enough to greet them now. Shiro offers a few acknowledgments, but he doesn’t actually _talk_ until they reach Keith’s door. “Do you—”

“It’s keyed into your biometrics,” Keith admits.

A pleased rumble—almost a purr—kicks up in Shiro’s chest as he nuzzles into Keith’s hair. He easily shifts the brunt of Keith’s weight onto his prosthesis before putting his hand to the door’s lock. It chimes pleasantly as it unlocks. The door hisses open.

Inside smells like home.

Keith slumps in Shiro’s hold—releasing stress he’d barely even noticed. All it took was two weeks to train him that being _outside_ meant assholes. Or maybe he just likes the way Shiro’s scent flares now, pheromones soaking the air in a primal claim. Home smells even better when it has his alpha.

“Lemme down.” He’s released by degrees, until his feet touch the floor and he’s finally standing (mostly) under his own power.

Above him, Shiro clears his throat awkwardly. “I can stay out here,” he offers, gesturing at the couch vaguely. “If you— I can guard your nest.”

Keith’s almost hurt before he realizes how reluctant Shiro sounds. Like it’s physically painful to offer to stay away. Biting his lower lip, he peers up through his bangs and watches Shiro’s throat twitch with a convulsive swallow. “Don’t you wanna see my nest?” he asks.

“Fuck,” Shiro breathes. “Yeah. Yeah, of course I want to see your nest, baby.”

There were moments in the Lions where new power flooded him—quintessence syncing just right and making Keith feel like something older and greater than himself. Those moments pale compared to this.

Linking their hands, he leads Shiro into the quiet dark of his bedroom. Childhood habit means he has little in the way of personal things—the room is almost painfully sparse aside from the bed. The bed, which has been piled high with Shiro’s things to form a densely plush nest. It’s the best one he’s ever made.

Shiro comes to a dead halt. Keith lets him.

It’s— It’s just that showing an unmated alpha one’s nest isn’t strictly _done_. There’s a reason the Garrison has barracks for heats, even partnered ones. But this feels natural. _Right._ Every time Keith fantasized, he’d seen them sharing his nest.

“Do you like it?” he asks, finally.

“Y-yeah.” The way Shiro’s voice cracks over the word is sweetly raw. Still staring at it, he swallows once. Convulsively. For a moment his grip on Keith’s hand tightens. Not enough to hurt, but enough to be anchoring and possessive and longing in ways that they both need. “Yeah, baby. I love it. It’s perfect.”

And Keith’s not the type to preen, but he’s flush with a smug kind of adoration. _I did that_ , he thinks as he takes in Shiro’s awed face.

“Come on,” he says, shucking his clothes as he stumbles over to the nest. Being naked in his nest is the best thing. Especially since it feels like he left the heat on. There’s a vaguely choked noise behind him when he loses his boxer briefs and collapses into the nest. Maybe he’s pushing too far and fast.

Tucking one of Shiro’s pillows under his torso, he looks over his shoulder to judge if he misread the situation. But no—Shiro’s pulling off his uniform with reckless efficiency, eyes locked predatorily on Keith. Their gazes only break as he bends to shove off his uniform pants.

As Shiro moves, his shoulders flex, scarred and thick with muscle that Keith’s teeth ache to sink into. There’s a scar—red and welted—on the right one that he got taking a hit from a Galra soldier for Keith. At the time it’d just pissed him off. It’s not like he couldn’t have taken the blow. Now it feels almost sweet. It’d been so long, before Shiro, since he’d had someone willing to bear pain for him.

Whining low in his throat, he watches as Shiro straightens and prowls toward the bed. Behind him is the detritus of all their clothes. All their clothes except Shiro’s own boxer briefs, still clinging to his powerful thighs and the half hard bulge of his cock. Keith whines again.

Shiro’s lips kick up into a half smile as he settles on the edge of the nest. The weight of his prosthesis settles on Keith’s bare shoulder, thumb rubbing soothing circles over the jut of bone. “What’s the matter, baby?” Normally the metal is cool. It feels almost like ice now. Good on his overheated skin.

“Dunno,” he says. Now that they’re here—mostly naked in his nest—he doesn’t know what comes next. Keith’d never tried to find a partner for his heats. Pressing his face back into the pillow, he asks, “How does this work?”

“We stay here,” Shiro says, and thank fuck he sounds gentle instead of teasing. “At least until dinner. Hunk promised he’d pull out all the stops for my return. I think it would be good if we set up a time to talk to your doc, too. See where you’re at in your heat cycle.”

“About half of that sounds okay,” Keith says.

“Which half?”

“The staying here half.”

Shiro hums, the sound amused but acknowledging. “Should I tell Hunk we aren’t coming?” His hand lifts off Keith’s shoulder and his weight shifts like he’s going to stand.

“No!”

Momentarily frozen, Shiro tentatively lowers his hand back down and squeezes Keith’s shoulder. “No?”

“Don’t—” Fuck, he can’t even force the words out of his mouth. _Don’t go, don’t leave me, don’t don’t don’t_ ** _._ **Swallowing convulsively, he pleads, “Just stay here.”

Another hum. “Okay. Whatever you need, baby.” Feeling foolish, Keith moves his face just enough to peer up at Shiro. His smile is fond as he tucks some hair behind Keith’s ear. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen you like this,” he says. It’s easy to guess what he means, and hard to resent him for it as his thumb brushes Keith’s cheekbone. “I _know_ I don’t want anyone else to see you like this.”

“No one else will.” The promise is easy to give.

Shiro ducks down and presses a kiss to the corner of Keith’s mouth. “Even if they have special Altean knots?” he asks, catching Keith’s lower lip with his thumb. His skin tastes like salt and metal and strength. Each callus is a tease as it brushes across kiss bruised skin. It’s a provocation, and a knowing one from the way Shiro’s eyes have gone dark.

Keith feels something _give_. All his nerve endings compress into this one touch. Sweat dampens the back of his neck and eases down his spine. He can feel his pulse in every inch of his body, and his senses feel dialed up until everything aside from his alpha is nothing but white noise. He nips Shiro’s thumb, then tips back into his nest. Just out of reach.

(Not quite out of reach, though. Not if Shiro lunges forward—the way he almost does before he catches himself.)

Idly Keith wonders what it’d take to get Shiro to pin him down and _take_ him. More warmth floods his body as he imagines it. The heavy slide of Shiro’s body over his. The aching fullness of Shiro’s knot in him. The sweet pain of Shiro’s mark on him…

“I don’t want anyone else’s knot,” he says. “They can’t satisfy me.”

Shiro’s pupils have blown so wide that the grey of his irises are like the rim of an eclipse. “They can’t?”

Arching his back—he has to show his bare neck, his small tits, his empty belly—he says, “Galra mate for life. I can’t be satisfied by any knot but my alpha’s.”

The sound that Shiro lets out then isn’t quite human. It’s a growling roar that fills the space like a natural disaster.

Keith is bigger now. Stronger. But he’s still at the mercy of his alpha when Shiro’s prosthetic closes over both his wrists, pressing them to the nest above his head and leaving him vulnerable. “That why you didn’t want the toy?” Shiro asks, nosing against his sweat streaked temple. “Why you rutted on my shirt instead?”

Embarrassment writhes in Keith’s belly as he ducks his head. It’d been the epilogue to the story everyone knew. The way he’d managed to survive each heat until he’d been old enough for suppressants. But he hadn’t thought anyone else knew.

Shiro nips his earlobe. The brief sting isn’t enough to distract from the rough purr of his laughter. “You ruined more than one of my shirts. Even after all the washings I could still smell your slick and I _knew_ you’d put it between your legs and ridden it until you came. Knew you’d wanted me. Hottest fucking thing.”

“Ahh,” Keith whines. Shiro had known. Shiro had _known_ and he’d still blithely handed over his clothing each time a heat came around.

“I thought you’d outgrow it,” Shiro says. He kisses and bites his way up Keith’s jaw. “But I’m glad you didn’t. I don’t think I could’ve shared you, even then. Fuck, that’s a lie, I know I wouldn’t have shared you.”

Galra instincts flare at the subtle promise of violence. “Would you have fought them off?” The Blades had such displays every so often. Alphas beating one another bloody to claim an omega who’d put out the word of an oncoming heat. It was all consensual, of course, but there’d been a feral quality to it that spoke to him.

The hand around his wrists tightens to near bruising. “No.” Shiro’s voice is deadly soft, his breath playing over the vulnerable curve of Keith’s throat. “No. I would’ve killed them.” For once he doesn’t sound apologetic for his arena honed instincts, or the accompanying brutality.

“ _Fuck_.” Just like that his legs part, one leg hooking over Shiro’s hips as he tries to draw his alpha in where he needs him most. “Fuck, Shiro, please.” The new exposure makes him dizzily aware of how wet he is. The slick clinging to his thighs is cool against his skin, cool against the sweltering air between their bodies, cool in all the places he needs _heat_. “I need it. Need you. I—”

“Yeah?” Shiro asks, dropping his hips. The heavy drag of his cock—still covered by his boxer briefs—against Keith’s hole makes the world white out for a heartbeat. “What do you need, baby?”

“Need you to knot me.” Keith’s tongue feels thick and clumsy in his mouth. “Need—”

A guttural noise rips from Shiro’s chest as his hips jerk in an aborted, instinctive thrust. If he hadn’t still been wearing the briefs it might’ve connected. Keith’s so wet that the slide would’ve been easy. Would’ve been perfect. “Fuck,” Shiro says, “You’re in heat.”

Keith blinks. “‘m not.”

“You are. You’re in heat, baby.” Like he needs to punctuate that, or maybe like he can’t stop himself, he half-thrusts again.

Slowly—so slowly it almost feels like trying to constellate stars—the pieces fall into place. Keith’s feverish, slick, and so empty he aches with it. Half mindless with cravings for Shiro’s knot, Shiro’s mark, Shiro’s dominance. Almost clawing as he clings to the broad planes of Shiro’s back. Oh.

_Oh._

Ankles crossing at the small of Shiro’s back, chest heaving with soft pants, hole clenching around nothing, he says, “I’m in heat.”

“You are.” The words come out like shipwrecks. “Should I leave?”

Keith loves him—knows that Shiro is a brilliant, noble, brave man who’s only trying to do right by him because he believes against all odds and logic that Keith is _worth it_ —but: “If you don’t fuck me now, I’m going to go find another knot.”

Bruises ring his wrists as Shiro’s grip tightens, and their noses brush as Shiro leans down. “No. I’m it for you, baby. You said so yourself. Even if that’s not true, it’s me or no one for this heat.”

“Oh yeah?” Now that he’s paying attention, Keith can feel the changes in his body. The slick, the fever, the sharp jut of his fangs as they drop. All of it made more intense by Shiro playing by Galra mores instead of human ones. Stars, that’s hot. Part of him knows he ought to back off, but a larger part wants more. Wants the proof of Shiro’s possession carved into his bones.

“Yeah,” Shiro says. It lacks the sharpness Keith expected. One of his thumbs caresses over the thrumming pulse point in Keith’s wrist. “I would never hurt you. Not for anything. I wouldn’t do anything without your consent.”

Keith’s throat goes tight at the unexpected sweetness. “Oh.”

“But I don’t trust anyone else with you. Not when you’re this far under. It comes to it, I’ll guard the door for your heat. And you know no one can get past me.”

Heat pricks the back of Keith’s eyelids and hormones or no, he’s not going to cry at being protected. He’s not. Because it’s—if Shiro were anything like most alphas, Keith would’ve never fallen for him this hard. But—

(—no one talks about it. It’s uncomfortable, and it’s supposed to be better now, and it’s painful. The cases are heard in courts now instead of dismissed. That’s something. Only he’d been a problem kid from the wrong side of the tracks and if it’d happened to him, if he’d gone to the police station with bruises and let them run the kit, it never would’ve amounted to anything. Keith remembers spending his presenting heat in the cellar of the group home. It was the coolest and most defensible part of the house. The whole time he clutched his mother’s knife, verging on delirium, because—)

More heat surges at the corners of his eyes and he growls, turning his face to hide against his bicep. “Shut up,” he says. “Let’s just—”

“Okay,” Shiro agrees. Too soft. He presses a kiss to Keith’s too hot cheek. “There are better things for my mouth to be doing, anyway.”

Slowly he releases Keith’s wrists, and Keith hurriedly puts his newly freed hands over his face to hide the fresh wave of definitely-not-tears. There’s no comment for that—no subtle tease that would make Keith’s stomach knot or questions that would make Keith’s fragile dignity shatter—just more tender kisses trailing down his chest. The kisses pause near the soft skin of his navel.

Warm breath draws goose bumps to the surface and Shiro’s hands are gentle on Keith’s parted thighs. “You can tell me no,” he says. “Anytime. You can tell me no and this stops.”

“What if I don’t say no?”

“Then I don’t stop.”

“‘kay,” Keith breathes, peeking between his fingers. He catches sight of one heart rending smile before the kisses return, traveling over his belly to the jut of one hipbone. The hands at his thighs lift him, hooking his legs over Shiro’s shoulders and leaving him bared.

The first kiss to his hole leaves him sinking his teeth into his hand to stop a whiny gasp. His hips jerk up, messy and heedless, only to be pinned back down as Shiro plants a hand atop his stomach. “Steady, baby,” he murmurs. Like the feeling of his lips moving _there_ as he talks won’t wreck Keith even more. Jerk.

“Better things,” Keith says.

“As you wish.”

It all goes to hell in the best way. Tongue curling deep in Keith’s hole before licking flat over his cock. He’s helpless to the wet pulse between his legs, the way his hips stutter their rhythm each time Shiro’s tongue flicks _just like that_. It’s nothing like riding a toy or his own fingers. Too wet, too luxurious, too slow a build. But it’s building, inescapable as the tide.

“Let me hear you,” Shiro says. Slick coats his lower lip and chin, gleaming in the faint light, and—

Groaning raggedly, Keith pries his teeth from his hand. “Fuck me,” he says. “Fuck me, Shiro.”

“I am.”

“No, you’re not.” Maybe he should be wary of Shiro’s smirk, but he isn’t. Not until he feels two of Shiro’s fingers sink into him. Slow. Gentle. Easy. The kindest invasion he’s ever been conquered by. Keith’s toes curl & clench, heels digging into Shiro’s shoulders. There’s a sharp tug in his gut. “Ungh. Oh _fuck_.”

“See? Have to stretch you, baby.”

“You don’t,” he slurs. “I can take it. ‘m a size queen.”

Huffing a laugh against his hip, Shiro goes: “Can you?” Another finger slips into him, stretching and filling in a way Keith’s never felt, and the callused pads of Shiro’s fingers press _hard_ against his g-spot.

Supernovas have nothing on the vibrant colors that fill Keith’s vision then. He bucks, wail hissing out between his teeth and stomach tensing with the shadow of an orgasm.

“Sweet baby. How’re you gonna take my knot if you can’t even take my fingers?” Shiro croons. And. Fuck. That smug expression shouldn’t look so good on his face. Leaning down, he manages to curl his tongue in alongside his fingers.

All the pleasure collapses in on itself, a riptide pulling Keith out. The wail that leaves him is pitchy with need. His body clenches and releases around those thick fingers. Not quite what he needs but so close, closer than he’s ever gotten, close enough that he’s breathless with it. The tide drags him out and out and out until he’s wrecked. When he drifts back in and pries his eyes open, he’s given another one of those heart rending smiles as Shiro pets his side.

“Better?”

“Yeah.” It’s an understatement. He’d never come like that when he was on his own, no matter how many of Shiro’s shirts he ruined. Actually getting his alpha’s knot in him might break him.

“Want another?” Shiro asks, mischief in the arch of his eyebrow.

“Yeah.” Arms trembling, Keith reaches down to cup Shiro’s jaw and pulls him up into a kiss that tastes like slick. “But this time, I want it on your knot.” His alpha makes a punched out noise, like he’s taken a hit he might not recover from. “C’mon,” Keith coaxes. “I need it. Need you.”

“Okay.” Shiro pulls back a little, until he’s half kneeling over Keith as he fumbles with the waistband of his boxer briefs.

And Keith wants to tease—to play with his alpha the way he’s been played with—but everything goes out his head when he gets a look at Shiro’s cock. He’d known from glimpses of Shiro in underwear or towels that his alpha’s cock is big. He’d _known_. It’s maybe what’d made it so easy to snap out that the damn thing was thirteen inches to an entire flight hangar. But. “You’re supposed to be a grower _or_ a shower. Not both!”

Because the thing filling out Shiro’s boxer briefs, soaking through near the band with precum, is more than big. It’s going to ruin Keith. He knows that, hole clenching around nothing and nipples going tight. That cock is going to _ruin_ him.

Shiro lifts one shoulder in a shrug, deliberately casual like sugar wouldn’t melt in his mouth. The boxer briefs slide down his thighs. As he bends slightly to pull off the underwear, his cock bounces up lazily to slap against his stomach before it’s own weight pulls it back down.

Unable to stop himself—his mouth is literally watering—Keith reaches out to curl his hand around the blood flushed length. It’s hot and thick and weighty in his palm, and his fingers don’t quite meet where they curl around it. He swipes his thumb over the head and relishes the glide of precum. Shiro grunts, falling forward and bracing himself before he crushes Keith. His hips rut into Keith’s hand. “This might actually be thirteen inches.”

“Maybe,” Shiro says, tendons in his neck straining as he tries to still himself.

Pouting, Keith lets go long enough to cover his palm in his own slick before gripping Shiro again. He likes the moan that gets him. “How big is it?” he asks, stroking.

“Don’t know,” Shiro grits out. “Didn’t bother measuring.”

Fair. There wasn’t really a need to measure after—

Keith pauses, then loosens his grip. “Ridges?” he asks, feeling dumb. Those are Galran alpha ridges beneath his fingers. Thick, faintly lavender hued, meant-to-stimulate-internal-mating-gland ridges. Before his time in the Abyss, he’d had some toys with those. They’d been excellent. Not what he craved at his core, because all he’d ever really wanted was Shiro, but.

Shiro winces. “Uh. Yeah.”

“No, no, I like them,” Keith says. Tries not to sound too greedy about it. Probably fails, if the wry smile Shiro gives him is anything to go by.

Letting down his weight onto his elbows, Shiro kisses him again. It’s long, and drugging, and nearly enough for him to forget that they were about to fuck. Sucking at Shiro’s tongue—which shouldn’t be hot, it should be gross, but he keeps thinking about how that tongue felt _in him_ —he lifts his hips in a needy way. That gets Shiro to pull back, but not far. Panting, he asks, “How do you wanna do this?”

“Like this,” Keith says, because it’s what he’s always wanted. Since his first heat knowing Shiro. “Face to face. I know it’s not—“

Shiro silences him with another kiss. “I want what you want.”

Then he pulls back fully, setting onto his heels as he drapes Keith’s thighs over his own. It should bother Keith. Being spread open, with no place to hide, at the mercy of an alpha.

Only it’s not ‘an alpha’, it’s _his_ alpha. This is the man who saved him, who believed in him, who protected him and cherished him and gentled him. Keith chose this alpha, will always choose this alpha, and that makes all the difference. “Please,” he says. Reaching for Shiro, he catches his organic hand and twines their fingers together in a brief squeeze. Lets everything he’s feeling—everything he wants and needs—show. “Please, Shiro, ‘ve been waiting for this my whole life.”

Something cracks open in Shiro’s expression at the confession—raw and sweet and wild—like he’s been given something he couldn’t have even hoped for. His prosthetic cups Keith’s cheek, thumb smoothing over the full jut of Keith’s lower lip. “I don’t deserve you,” he murmurs. It’s quiet enough—the look in his eyes distant enough—that he must not realize he said it.

And maybe Keith should let it pass. It would be easier. But it would also be a lie. “You have me.” He turns his face to press a kiss to Shiro’s palm. “You have me beyond death. You have me until the end of all realities.”

“I know. Doesn’t mean I deserve you.” Shiro guides his cock to Keith’s hole. It’s a blind tease, precum smearing into slick, then a push. Just the tip—the head stretching his untried muscles. Not painful but still somehow _more_ than he’s used to. “But I’m not giving you up, either.”

“Fuck, _Shiro,_ ” Keith whines, feeling another orgasm curl at the base of his spine. There’s no relief to it—no release to leave him boneless and quivering.

“Relax,” Shiro says, stroking Keith’s thigh.

“Trying.” And he is, he’s trying so hard, it shouldn’t be this hard. Keith’s taken more than this. Or at least an equivalent to this. But he’s too aware of the slow slide of Shiro’s cock into him. The endless, aching, _perfect_ slide. Finally there’s a pause. Keith opens his eyes—when did he close them?—and asks, “Are you in?”

One corner of Shiro’s mouth kicks up. “Almost, baby.”

“Almost?”

“Halfway.”

“ _Fuck_ ,” Keith says again. With feeling. His synapses fire with contradictions—more, too much, more—until he settles on: “Don’t stop.”

Leaning down, Shiro brackets Keith’s head with his forearms and rolls his hips forward in a gentle thrust that Keith feels in his throat. They get maybe another inch or two in before Keith finds himself clinging to Shiro’s back. He tries not to claw, but it’s so much. Another inch and his Galra blood flares—the light in the room going from human dim to Galra bright as his fangs dig into his lower lip. It’s _so much_.

“Just a little more,” Shiro promises. The rhythm he’s built up is steady and easy. Keith should be able to take it but he’s ruined. Whimpering with the punishing weight of Shiro’s cock. “I’m almost all the way in. You’re taking me so well. Just a little more.”

But Keith’s _full_.

“I can’t— It’s too much— Shiro, please—“ His claws bite in and he didn’t mean to, but the world is slipping away and he needs to hold on if he doesn’t want to lose himself. Kisses are pressed to his cheekbone, to his jaw, to his kiss bruised mouth. “Shiro, you’re gonna break me—”

His alpha stops—muscles tensing with the effort of it—and nuzzles against his sweat streaked temple. “Are you hurt, baby?”

Whining on each exhale, Keith tries to make sense of the question. There’s no pain. Not really. No ache of torn flesh. But. “Full,” he says. “So full.”

“Full is good.” Still nuzzling at his temple, his alpha thrusts again. Deep and slow. Keith can’t help the wail it wrings out of his throat. “You need it to break your heat.” Another thrust. Those soft ridges catch along Keith’s walls and his toes curl. “Let me break your heat.” Another thrust. The knot catches on his rim, then slips past in a burning stretch that leaves him shaking. Another thrust. They’re almost locked and his alpha is so deep, so big, so good. One of Shiro’s hands skims reverently over his belly. “Oh, baby, can see my cock in you.”

Keith brings one of his own hands down to touch the same expanse of sweat streaked skin. Forget seeing it. Keith can _feel_ it. The slightest curve just below his belly button. As Shiro pulls back, it disappears, and when Shiro thrusts back in it bumps against his palm.

“More.” The demand comes out slurred between his fangs and punctuated by pressing his heels into the small of Shiro’s back.

“I’ve got you,” Shiro croons. “I’m gonna give you what you need.” Pressing a kiss to Keith’s temple, he sets back on his heels and skims his hands across sweat-streaked skin. Both of his hands can span the entirety of Keith’s waist. It’s going to leave bruises. Shiro tightens his grip and withdraws aching slow.

Punched out mewls spill from his lips as Shiro’s knot and the mating ridges stretch out his hole. It’s a good ache, like sparring until he’s exhausted, but he’s going to be feeling it for days. Fuck. Going to be feeling it for years.

And then Shiro gives it to him.

The snap of his hips is brutal. Enough to make Keith slide a bit closer to the headboard before Shiro pulls him back onto his cock. Onto those ridges and that knot. Keith lets out another mewl that bleeds into nothing as his alpha pins him deeper into their nest and _fucks_ into him.

Can’t even pretend that he’s taken anything like this before. No toy’s ever been in him this deep. Couldn’t ride any toy long enough or hard enough.

But his alpha’s forcing him open, letting go of his hips to nudge one leg up and over his shoulder. The new angle is perfect, and somehow makes everything more intense, and he’s losing himself into the relentless pulse of it all. Everything in the universe fades away. Until all that's left is his alpha and enough pleasure to make him forget that he’s ever known pain.

Something wet slides along his fingertips as he claws at his alpha’s back, chest, arms. Another wail catches in his throat but he’s barely got enough air to whimper. Desire burns in his skin his veins his marrow. It’s not enough even as he’s remade with each punishing thrust. The mewl he lets out is pleading. Helpless. Desperate. Whatever’s coming for him—this alien need coiled deep in his womb—he’s not strong enough. Needs his alpha. Needs his mate. Needs _Shiro_. Muscles strain as he’s bent almost in half. Shiro becomes his whole universe and his eyes are grey his teeth are sharp his voice is gravel and thunder and the space between stars—

“Let go, baby, I’ve got you.”

Keith’s back bows and he’s screaming with no air, no sound, no end. It doesn’t feel like pleasure, now. Too bright and sharp. It’s the shocky white behind his eyes and the frantic tremble in his thighs and the rhythmic clench of his body trying to coax a tie. Somehow not enough even though it should be. Has to be. Needs to be. “ _Shiro_.” 

Growling, Shiro pushes deep and sets his teeth to the join of Keith’s neck and shoulder. Testing until Keith arches up into the bite. Permission and plea in one. Alpha fangs punch through skin and muscle. Lock in, just as his knot finally locks into Keith. The hot rush of blood is almost as addictive as the warm pulse of come. Both fill up every hollow space that’s ever lived in him. Maybe that’s ever lived in both of them.

Another orgasm rolls in. Not the riptide of earlier, or the tsunami of a minute ago, but something sweet and easy and inevitable as the tide. Keith lets it pull him under, knowing that he won’t drown so long as he has Shiro.

* * *

What finally wakes him from his heat daze is the sound of his mom’s comms code. It’s way too early in the morning, and his mouth has that weird cottony feel to it that means he hasn’t brushed his teeth in a few days, and he doesn’t want to answer even if ignoring her might lead to an intergalactic incident.

Keith answers his comms.

“Congratulations,” Krolia says. Brusque as usual, but he can tell she’s being sincere. “Where is your mate?”

Rubbing some of the sleep crust from his eyes, Keith croaks, “What?”

“Your mate.” There’s a pause of indeterminate length. Keith’s internal clock has yet to turn on. Apparently she decides to take pity on him for that. Or she gets bored of waiting. “Shiro.”

“Oh.”

That’s a good question, actually. For most of his heat, Shiro’d never been further away than arm’s length. When he’d had to go to the kitchen to pull out the food supplies to last them for a few days he’d let Keith cling to his back like a very determined and horny koala. “Uh.” Now that he’s focusing, he can hear the drip of the coffeemaker and the faint tapping of Shiro’s prosthetic against a PADD. Work must’ve finally caught up with the Captain. Vaguely, Keith gestures toward his bedroom door. “Um. Out there.”

One of Krolia’s eyebrows inches upward. “You already banished him from your nest?”

“No.” Like he would ever kick Shiro out of bed. The Abyss hadn’t included sharing fantasies—which is the greatest blessing of his life—but Krolia had seen more than enough evidence to know _that_.

When Krolia simply waits for him to continue—she has the patience of an old Earth saint and the single-mindedness of a pit bull—he debates. Because his mom likes Shiro. Thinks he’s smart and kind, and silently approves of his tenures as the Champion and the Black Paladin. But.

Sinking lower into his nest, he says, “The heat, uh, came on right after he landed. He probably has some paperwork. With the mission. And, um, everything.”

“Paperwork,” she says. Because his mom may like Shiro, but like any proper Galra she’s absolutely judging him for his conscientiousness regarding his duties as Captain when he’s got a heat dazed omega one room over. That’s what needs judging. Obviously. Not the fact that he fucked her omega son silly for roughly three days straight without any kind of formalized courting announcement.

Then again, Keith’s judging him for the paperwork too. Just a little. “Yep,” he says. “Paperwork.”

“Well, I am happy for you both, and for your mating.” Something on his face must give it away. Or maybe the way he immediately reaches up to cup his hand over the barely healed mark on his neck that’s pure Galra but has no legal grounding on Earth, at least not yet, because they still haven’t ratified that particular subset of the treaty. Either way, she asks: “You _are_ mated now, aren’t you?” Faint worry lines have creased between her brows. “Not doing that human thing with the heat partners.”

Another good question.

“Thanks for calling, and for the congratulations, but… Hungry. I’m super hungry. I’ll call you back later, okay?” Keith sees the glint of her fangs as she opens her mouth to chide him, but by then he’s already closing out the call. Fuck.

Shiro definitely wanted the heat sharing. The _fucking_. And Shiro cares about him. Of course Shiro cares about him. Shiro has cared about him since before Keith knew how to care about himself. But they hadn’t exactly verbalized what all of this meant. Hadn’t discussed what came after the heat. Hadn’t exchanged ‘I love you’s or courting promises. And now Shiro was out in the living area doing paperwork while his mate—no, his omega, fuck, no, his _heat partner_ —was barely out of heat.

The feeling bubbling in Keith’s stomach isn’t worry. It’s definitely not insecurity. It’s concern. Appropriate, professional, adult _concern_. Which he will discuss with Shiro in an appropriate, professional, adult way.

Most of the sweat and come was cleaned off him sometime between their last round and him waking up, which makes getting ready to face the metaphorical firing squad easier. It still takes him a few minutes to pull on clothes—which are a distinctly _weird_ experience after being naked for the last 72ish hours—and stumble out into his living area. Small concessions bought by saving the universe include the luxury of a combination living room and kitchenette, neither of which he uses. Maybe he’d use them more if the view was like this:

Shiro, chest and feet bare, wearing low slung grey sweatpants that cling to him in deeply inappropriate ways and highlight the heavy shadow of his dick. Shiro, sitting on his couch with a PADD in one hand and a mug of coffee in the other, charmingly domestic despite the claw marks raked across his shoulders and chest. Shiro, hair ruffled, looking like about nine of Keith’s wet dreams come to life.

Made stupid by this sight and his own still rampaging hormones and also maybe his very sensible and adult _concern_ , Keith manages to blindly walk right into—or maybe the better word is _onto_ —his sleeping space wolf.

The wolf yelps and poofs away. Keith yelps and starts to fall. Shiro doesn’t yelp, just cusses as he drops everything to lunge for Keith. They land sprawled on the floor.

“What the fuck,” Keith manages. It takes longer than he’d like to process that his alpha caught him and managed to roll them midair so he’d take the brunt of the landing. Which is probably why he’s not hurting right now. Also why his cheek is smashed into Shiro’s right pec. Which, honestly, there are worse places to end up. One of Shiro’s thighs is between his too, which is nice. More than nice. Keith is not allowed to grind down on that thigh. He is _not_. The heat is over. “What the fuck.”

Huffing out a laugh, Shiro lets his head fall back onto the floor. One of his hands settles at the small of Keith’s back, the thumb sliding up under Keith’s tee to rub at the notches of his spine. “Yeah.”

“Why did you—” he asks. Because he’s definitely taken worse hits and falls in training. The worst damage of this would’ve been to his pride. Now the worst damage is to his couch and/or Shiro’s PADD.

“You’d hit me if I told you.”

Rolling his eyes, Keith says, “Tell me anyway.”

“Alpha instincts.” The explanation comes out equal parts amused, long suffering, and sheepish. It’s a hell of a combination.

“Usually alpha instincts involve grinding against my ass during training, not staining my couch with coffee and damaging thousands of dollars worth of government equipment to spare me a few bruises.” Keith means it as a joke—it’s the kind of thing he’s heard plenty of omegas, from multiple species, say over the years.

Instead of laughing, Shiro’s chest rumbles with a low growl. Their bodies tip and twist until he finds himself staring up into Shiro’s face. Tucked beneath him like this, the growl feels like an earthquake. “Who?”

This feels oddly familiar. Like the hallway alcove, with Shiro riled up about every theoretical alpha who’d come onto Keith in his absence. It’s still sexy as fuck. It’s also still deeply confusing. Swallowing, Keith tries to set his expression into something innocent. Or at least convincingly neutral. “Who what?”

It doesn’t work. “Who _touched_ you?”

“No one.” Amended to, “Not really.” 

Jaw tightening, Shiro buries his face against Keith’s neck with a muffled snarl. “You’re mine,” he growls. “ _Mine_.” One callused hand rucks Keith’s tee shirt up around his waist to skim over his ribs and the dip of his navel. The other pulls at the loose collar of the shirt to bare the bite. Their maybe bonding mark. The sight of it seems to settle Shiro. Brushing his lips against it, he murmurs, “Sorry, I’m—”

“It’s fine—”

“It’s _not_. My instincts are stronger than I’m used to. It’s making it— I know you can take care of yourself. But I still—”

After a moment, Keith wriggles a hand between their bodies and places it on Shiro’s chest. Right where his heart is thudding in an animal rhythm. “Clone body?” he asks, carefully. This might be like the stupid mating ridges. Something pushed onto him by a madwoman.

“Sort of.” Shiro’s voice cracks, just a little, with something that sounds terribly close to shame. “Not really. It’s the same instincts as before. From the arena.”

They’ve talked about that time in pieces over the years. How it’d stripped him down. Made him something both more and less than he’d been before Kerberos. ‘You’re still you,’ Keith had promised after every blood soaked confession about what it took to survive. ‘I still feel the same way about you.’ Because love has always meant loving all of him. Keith loves Shiro for his courage and his self-sacrifice and his brutality as much as for his gentleness and his humor.

Back then, Shiro’d given him a wrecked half smile. Now Shiro scents him, almost needy, and says: “Same instincts, but they’re stronger. They’re not—”

“Human.” Feeling the hesitant nod against the hollow of his throat, he snorts and thumps a fist against Shiro’s chest. They’re both stupid. He’s inclined to think Shiro is stupider, at least in this, because by now he ought to know better. “Don’t know if you’ve noticed, but my instincts aren’t exactly human either.”

“I know," Shiro says. Not like he’s comforted. More like he’s been told of an oncoming natural disaster. Then, like an afterthought, “Told you you’d hit me.”

Keith would hit him again if he didn’t sound so wry, and tired, and _sad_.

As it is, he looks up and tries to gather whatever remains of his emotional tact. The ceiling is a very boring slate grey. Everything in the Garrison is slate grey or fucking orange. Omegas are supposed to be good at providing comfort and negotiating tense emotional situations. Stereotypes are bullshit. Keith’s never been any of that. All he can offer is sincerity and imperatives that sometimes come out like threats. Somehow he never noticed that one of the rivets in his ceiling is damaged. It’s the only flaw in the unrelenting blandness. What omega can’t comfort their alpha? Forget emotional tact. There’s none left for him to use.

This is so fucking far out of his depth.

He’s not surprised—not really, not in a meaningful way—when the first words he manages to push out of his mouth are: “Why weren’t you there when I woke up?”

Shiro lets out a small, wounded, nearly _animal_ noise against his throat. Against the bite mark that might be a bond mark. The sound is quiet. So quiet that it would’ve been lost if he didn’t have Galran senses. After, he says, “I’m sorry. I wanted to be.”

“Why weren’t you?”

Some of the weight—the warm body that had pinned him to the cool floor—disappears. Keith blinks. More weight lifts off him. It leaves him cold and strangely unmoored. Dark eyes scan over his face. One hand reaches out to cup his cheek. There’s only the suggestion of touch before Shiro looks away and withdraws his hand. “I couldn’t be.” 

Huffing on a laugh that feels closer to a sob, Keith reaches up to run his fingertips over the deep red welts his claws left sometime in the last three days. “Alpha instincts?” 

Shiro’s throat convulses as he swallows. “Yeah, something like that.”

“You don’t have to be sorry for your instincts.” Even if his instincts were to run. To regret. Keith doesn’t blame him. _Won’t_ blame him. In the end, Shiro did everything he promised to do. Took care of him, broke his heat, protected him from the dozens of standardless alphaholes. It’s not Shiro’s fault that after all of that Keith still wants more. Touching Shiro suddenly feels like the worst idea. He pulls away and drapes his arm over his eyes. “None of this is your fault.”

“This is,” Shiro whispers. Before Keith can ask what he means, Shiro brushes his fingertips over the bite mark. Calluses rasp over the raw skin in a way that should be painful but instead translates as pleasure. “This is definitely my fault. Fuck, I’m so sorry, Keith. You deserved better. You’ve always—”

Keith wonders if they’re having two conversations. Parallel, sure, but headed along entirely different trajectories. Because there’s no way that Shiro’s thinking _he’s_ the one not good enough in this situation.

The absurdity of it is enough to get him to drop his arm and open his eyes. Just to see. Just to _check_.

Shiro comes into hazy focus. Now that he’s looking for it—paying _attention_ —the shame clinging to every line of his alpha is obvious. Written in the furrow between his brows and the tight slump of his shoulders and the way he still won’t quite touch Keith. Shiro is good, and brave, and so very deeply ashamed.

Oh. _Fuck_.

Keith reaches for his earlier determination and finds it tucked alongside the uncompromising & unconditional love he’s always carried for this man. All of it adjacent to the insecurity—because ‘concern’ doesn’t cover the gnawing of _not good enough_. Quietly he gathers it all up. Lets it show in the burning behind his eyes and the faint tremble of his hands as he cups his alpha’s jaw.

Last time he said the words, they’d been fighting for their lives and maybe their souls on a crumbling platform. Last time, Keith’d crossed the universe blind and chased his heart down to hell. Last time, Shiro’d been dead. There are no threats here. No monsters but the ones they carry with them. Keith cracks open his own ribcage like it’s made of wishbones and says: “I love you.”

Above him, Shiro gives a full body flinch before abruptly crumbling. Their bodies meet and their breathing syncs. Shiro’s forearms bracket Keith’s head in a likeness of the first time they mated. “Keith...”

“It’s okay if you don’t love me.” Each word is brittle in his mouth. They break over his teeth like frost. Licking his lips, he pushes past the hurt and the insecurity and the hope of it because he owes this to Shiro. “But I love you.”

Shiro kisses him in the space between heartbeats. Rough, and possessive, and enough to steal the breath out of his lungs. “You don’t know what it was like,” he says into the whisper of space between their bodies. “In the arena and the astral plane. You don’t know what _I_ was like.”

“But—”

“No.” The denial is softened by a kiss to the corner of his mouth. Sweet in contrast to the bruising need of moments before. “You need to hear this. Because this—all of this—isn’t the witch or the clone.”

Keith lets his claws scritch through the short hairs at Shiro’s nape. Debates if he should answer. Settles for: “Okay.”

Their foreheads brush, then meet. “You were right. Captivity, death, and rebirth didn’t change my core. It’s always been me. I’m the one who wanted you before Kerberos. I’m the one who chose to kill innocents in the arena for the chance that I’d get back to you. I’m the one who marked you without your consent when you were too heat hazed to tell me no.” Shiro closes his eyes with a growl. “I would kill for you. I would die for you. I _live_ for you.”

Hope is a cruel bitch in his chest. Keith swallows. Nudges his nose against Shiro’s own. Waits until he opens his eyes. “You love me?”

“I love you more than I’m actually capable of talking about.”

Laughing probably isn’t the best response. But the choice is to laugh or to cry, and so he gives in to the breathy giggles that wrack his body as he pulls his alpha—his _mate_ —down onto him. Shiro gives in. The weight of him is reassuring. Letting his head thump back against the floor, Keith whispers: “You love me.”

Maybe he hears the insecurity threaded through Keith, even now, because Shiro nuzzles against his mating bite. “Yeah, I love you.” Shiro sounds so sure. Like he’s reciting an immutable law of quantum physics or handing out commands on a battlefield. “I love you, and that’s the best part of me. There were so many times—in the arena and the abyss—where it would’ve been easier to let go. But there was always you. I had to stay alive for you. Had to stay sane. Had to…”

With a low croon, Keith twists around to press a kiss to Shiro’s temple. “I love you too,” he says. There’s a sudden dampness against his neck. When he tightens his arms around his alpha’s shoulders, there’s the quiver of a barely suppressed sob. “I love you. I love you. I love you.”

* * *

Apparently, Hunk left them ‘post heat’ supplies by the door in an insulated bag. Because it’s Hunk, the supplies mostly consist of food, which is good because there’s fuckall left in the fridge.

Eyes slightly red rimmed but mouth firm, Shiro reheats tupperware after tupperware of food. Not for himself. Once they’d managed to get up off the floor, Keith’s body had reminded him that he was functionally starving and needed to remedy that _immediately_. So he eats through three tupperware worth of coconut curry and rice. It puts a not insubstantial dent in the supplies they were given.

“So full,” he mutters, shoving away the last tupperware after scraping it clean with his spoon. The next logical step is to fold his arms on the countertop and rest his head in the resulting cradle. “Might die.”

With a quiet laugh, Shiro ruffles his hair before collecting up the empty food containers. “You’re cute, baby.” The compliment holds echoes of the time before Kerberos, when Shiro would gather him up after he stumbled from the heat barracks and feed him greasy diner food and coo over all the lingering omega tendencies that he usually suppressed. They’d had a rhythm between them, even then.

“Hey, Shiro?”

“Mm?”

Keith lifts his face just enough to rest his chin on his arm. Pressing a thumb into his lower lip, he watches the play of his alpha’s well sculpted muscles. Dish washing, he’s realizing, is actually pretty fucking close to pornographic. At least when it’s Shiro and he’s shirtless. If his limbs were more cooperative, Keith would absolutely get up and go over to _bite_ him.

It takes longer than he’d like to wade through the haze that fantasy inspires. But he manages. It’s entirely coincidental that he manages around the same time the dish washing softcore pornography ends. Clearing his throat, Keith makes himself focus instead of zoning back into the dimples at the small of his alpha’s back. Those dimples are also worthy of biting. And licking. And: “So, um, what were your alpha instincts?”

Because he’s staring, he sees the reflexive stillness that comes over Shiro. Worry starts to creep in the longer the silence and stillness drag on. Finally, Shiro turns and braces himself back against the counter. The wry, self-deprecating quirk to his mouth isn’t exactly reassuring. “I got a notification.” Another pause. Longer, punctuated with Shiro rubbing at the back of his neck with his prosthetic. Keith does _not_ eye the curve of his metal bicep. “Turns out Alchemist Valan lodged an official complaint.”

“ _What_?”

Shiro’s mouth edges closer to a grin. He grips the back of his neck loosely and lifts his other shoulder in a shrug. “Threatening a ‘valuable member of the Coalition’ who is a ‘critical asset’ and has ‘diplomatic immunity’ is frowned upon by the brass.”

“Oh shit.” Guilt is a chill dripping down his spine. Even when it’d been happening, he’d known that letting Shiro handle the Altean alpha for him was a bad idea. “Are you in trouble?”

“Might be.” Shiro pushes away from the counter. As he circles the small kitchen island, Keith pushes upright and turns to meet him. Stopping between his spread thighs, Shiro grasps the nape of Keith’s neck with one hand and thumbs over the raw mating mark with the other. “Doubt it. I pulled rank. Veronica’s processing his termination paperwork right now. Allura’s handling his exit from the wormhole program. And Matt’s…”

Blinking, Keith prompts, “Matt’s?”

Something that _might_ be a blush settles on Shiro’s high cheekbones. “Matt’s spreading the word.” Under his breath, he adds, “Especially with the MFEs.”

Keith lets all this process. Probably it takes longer than it should. Blame it on the slow rasp of Shiro’s thumb over his mate mark sending his hormones into overdrive. Heat isn’t that far gone from his system. Finally, he says, “You spent the morning punishing another alpha...for hitting on me?”

Vaguely mutinous, Shiro shoots back, “I would’ve let it go if he’d transferred on his own.”

“Fuck.” Huffing on a laugh, Keith lets himself slump forward into his mate’s chest. “You’re ridiculous.” So is he, given the warmth sweet as sunshine gathering in his ribcage at the thought of being protected this way. No one ever cared enough to pull rank for him. To fuck protocol and the brass for him. It’s something he might just get addicted to. “Any other alpha instincts I should know about?”

Shiro’s hand caresses from his nape to the small of his back. “I’d really like to get you back in our nest and spend the rest of the day there.” Written between the lines is the alpha possessiveness that comes with new matings.

Mischief settles alongside the warmth in Keith’s ribcage. Hiding his smile against Shiro’s collarbone, he asks, “What about the welcome back dinner Hunk planned?”

Instead of answering, Shiro hooks his arm around Keith’s waist. Hauls him up. Starts toward the bedroom. Keith squirms and laughs and enjoys the arms tightening around his body in a secure hold that he’s never going to break free of.

Breathless giggles bubble out of him as he’s tossed gently into the nest. “C’mere.” Shiro obliges him, crawling up into the nest and bracing over him. When he reaches up, Shiro presses his cheek into Keith’s palm. There’s still a faint salt tackiness to his skin. Remnants of tear tracks. Keith quiets, but he’s barely done it before Shiro turns slightly and presses a kiss to the base of his thumb. “Oh.”

“ _Oh_ ,” Shiro teases. “I love you.”

“I love you too.” For a minute, it’s enough to rub his thumb over Shiro’s cheekbone and admire the sleek musculature of Shiro’s body looming over him. Just for a minute, though. “And you’ve got me back in our nest.” Fuck, he hopes he never gets over the thrill of saying _our nest_. “What are you going to do with me all day?”

Grinning, Shiro leans down and presses a chaste kiss to the corner of his eye. Then to his cheekbone. Then the tender skin near his ear. Then his jaw. And then, finally, to the corner of his upturned lips.

“That’s almost the sound you made when I fucked into you, baby.” It’s only as Shiro says that, the words whispering over his skin, that Keith realizes he’s whining. Breathless, wordless, all need and instinct. Back in their nest that smells like sex and heat and safety, he’s quickly slipping back into the headspace that consumed him during his heat. Shiro hooks his fingers into the waistband of Keith’s shorts and growls, “You gonna let me fuck you again?”

As if it’s even a question.

Keith yanks him down into a kiss. It starts aggressive, almost brutal, but then Shiro gentles him with barely there nips and the kind of dominant assurance that makes the rest of the world melt away. Because he doesn’t have to be the strong one, not here in their nest, not when his alpha is strong enough to keep him safe. Relaxing back into the nest, Keith lets Shiro coax him into a long and drugging series of kisses. In the space between, Keith manages to breathe out, “‘course, I’m a fucking size queen.”

That gets him a groan and an even deeper kiss that feels like it’s own kind of fuck. When Shiro pulls back several minutes later, Keith feels a little wrecked. Must look wrecked too, if the way Shiro’s eyes go dark and possessive means anything. “Yeah, you are, baby. And you’re _mine_.”

**Author's Note:**

> /shows up five months late with Starbucks
> 
> the omake of this fic is that krolia calls them back mid-fuck and gives shiro a shovel talk, hilarity ensues. anyway you can follow me on [the blue hellscape that is tweeter](https://twitter.com/akaiikowrites) where i start fics like this one as really long fic threads.
> 
> also, people??? made??? fanart?????? so go show them some love because i am humbled.
> 
> @shabbylines with the [chibi!keith nesting](https://twitter.com/shabbylines/status/1215383234948861966)  
> @Ingravedanger1 with the [hallway](https://twitter.com/Ingravedanger1/status/1216009638920876032?s=20) fuckin [makeouts](https://twitter.com/Ingravedanger1/status/1216009744780906496?s=20)  
> @Kit_N_Kanoodle with the [angry!protective!shiro](https://twitter.com/Kit_N_Kadoodle/status/1215100335351529472?s=20) and [softe!protective!shiro](https://twitter.com/Kit_N_Kadoodle/status/1215105744753897474?s=20)


End file.
